Seven Degress (The Seventh Wave Trilogy Book 2)

by Lewis Hastings

  “Sorry to eavesdrop gentlemen but with her diagnosis the best-case answer is c) – sometime...”

  He paused, allowing the news to circulate. Sensing a line crossed, he attempted a smoothing of the waters.

  “By that I do of course mean she could also make a full recovery, physically at least. We have no idea, no glistening ball of crystal on where the next few days will take her. Trust me, I’m a doctor.”

  He was Polish or German, or Welsh; normally this level of information was critical to the natural investigator but after the month he had experienced Cade couldn’t care less where he was from and who he was, as long as he prolonged her life.

  He found himself thinking that actually it was a good thing that he was away from her or her invasion of his mind and body would be complete and he’d never achieve anything. She had such a profound effect upon him – even in her half-departed state.

  What he feared was loving again. It wasn’t commitment per se, more a case of anxiety ruling his head.

  He nodded at the doctor; it was in preference to causing him so much harm for his overly honest opinion – the place was busy enough without another casualty.

  He gently shook Roberts’ hand.

  “I need to go, mate. You realise? I…or rather we, what’s left of us needs to hit the road and carry out some summary retribution, all under the auspices of the law you understand?”

  Roberts, who was still pumped full of morphine started to laugh. He caught a sideways glance from Cade.

  “Sorry Jack, I’m just having funny thoughts. I think it’s the drugs. This is some powerful shit!” He pointed to the pump next to him, tapping the device lovingly and grinning inanely.

  “OK mate, what’s so funny?”

  “I was going to start singing that song…Hit the road Jack.”

  “And?”

  “And I could see three black female backing singers walking in from around that curtain singing no more!”

  He started giggling which was unexpectedly infectious. Daniel looked away, biting his bottom lip. A nurse excused herself leaving Cade to fathom out whether it was an absolute insult or indeed a moment of levity.

  He began to walk out then spun around and burst into song.

  “What did you say?”

  Roberts was trying to respond with a line from Hit the road Jack but was unable to utter a coherent word due to his drug-fuelled haze.

  Daniel started clicking his fingers in time as Cade finished with the line about not coming back.

  The two able-bodied men pseudo high-kicked out of the room in time to the music, leaving their friend and colleague unable to talk for a fit of giggles.

  Daniel stopped after a few metres.

  “Come on, enough of this cabaret, we have to go. That’s an order.”

  “Good. I need something else to focus on. After all, I’ve done sweet FA for the last few weeks.”

  They had reached the car park when Cade’s phone chirped into life. He pulled the handset out of his trouser pocket to see a simple text message.

  South East Coastal port. Tomorrow morning. Your man is with them. Copil.

  Cade turned the screen towards Daniel.

  “I’m thinking the White Cliffs of Dover?”

  Daniel took a second the replied, “Just have to wait and see won’t we?”

  “How does he know this? And more importantly, do we trust him?”

  “I have no idea. And, as for trust, no less than I trust Hewett, Jack. No less. So in my book that equates to not very much at all, but forgive the pun, any port in a storm.”

  He pointed through the windscreen where the clouds a few miles in front were changing colour dramatically, light grey to darker hues, almost green.

  “Hardly a great night for fireworks is it?”

  “I guess it depends upon which type John.”

  Stefanescu’s cell phone also throbbed into life. He fumbled for the green button and jammed it between his shoulder and his left ear. The voice he heard was familiar if a little strained.

  “Hello brother….how are? How are my team? How is Mr Hewett?”

  “We are all OK. Mr Hewett is just fine. He is aware he is coming with us. As usual brother, I have done everything whilst you sip expensive brandy, smoke American cigarettes and play with your whore of the week. Where is she from today huh? Mexico? Brazil?”

  Alex snorted a sarcastic laugh as he took a moment to ignore the comment.

  “Stefan, if it wasn’t for me you would still be a moderately successful gypsy. Do not ever forget this.” He directed a stream of air over the last word whilst driving his fist into the black granite worktop of his jet black kitchen.

  “And if it wasn’t for me, brother, you would just be a gypsy with money…”

  There was a pause, a brief moment for both to have the upper hand before Alex continued, business-like once more.

  Smiling. “OK, you win this fight. Let me remind you that we both win if we stay strong and keep to the plan. You surely agree that the plan is good little brother?”

  He hated how he called him by that name, had done ever since he was able to comprehend that his older brother had a sadistic streak.

  Alex had recovered – for now. But his tinder-box temper was so close to the surface it would only take the merest hint of tension to drive him over the edge. He was pacing again, favouring the knuckles on his master hand, unsure why they were blue and painful.

  A lack of a reply from his younger brother was taken as an affirmative. He agreed with the plan.

  “Good. We need to start Phase Two – bring in the new children...let them learn, give them a free reign to exploit the British mainland, let them take risks, the more the better, I always succeed when I cling to the cliff face, the chalk filling my nails as I slip towards the next life. It is the thrill of waiting to fall Stefan. Deciding upon your own destiny. They say don’t look down. But you should, all the way to the bottom. Imagine falling and the feeling of hitting the ground. You really should try it sometime. ”

  His brother could hear in Alex’s tone that he was slipping back into a state of agitated behaviour once more – and this was a warning sign. He had first displayed symptoms of subtle obsessions as a young child, enough to cause his devoted parents some concern – but in a post-war, late-Forties communist annexe of the Soviet Union to even think about asking for such help was a sign of weakness. His true psychoses hadn’t manifested until much later, but in any event and shortly after he had suffered his first major lapse.

  He had strapped his mother to a wooden kitchen chair and having stupefied and blindfolded her he slit her shins carefully before he had ripped the varicose veins from her legs, with his bare hands. He despised their imperfect appearance, a bulging, green anachronistic legacy of her apparent youthful beauty. He wouldn’t know what she had looked like, for the state had burned every last picture of her as a younger woman. He told himself this – but he knew the truth. He took her love and crushed it. And yet he worshipped her. He told her this as he mopped up the congealing blood and rinsed the kitchen floor repeatedly.

  It was the first episode and the trigger for what followed. He had started to have thoughts about experimenting on animals but abhorred this – it was so cruel. Arson had been a substitute, watching the firemen arrive with their rudimentary equipment had provided a suitable thrill. The doctors spoke to him for hours, about his thoughts and deeds. He had answered honestly, and they declared his condition to be a direct result of having come home from school one day to find his mother slumped into an old chair, dead.

  He had killed his father with a hammer. Comparatively speaking it was an altogether easier scenario. There was no love there and to expend any more energy than was necessary seemed like a total waste of his talents. As he disposed of his body, he recalled one moment of clarity – the point where he stopped and questioned himself why he had just done what he had. He knew after a moment of brief self-flagellation that he would do it again if the inner demons
commanded it.

  There would be no mortification of the flesh for Alex Stefanescu.

  His time in prison had all but destroyed him. How anyone could return from that was remarkable – but it also explained why everything he created was genetically strong. Alex’s daughter, was a fiery thing – all the virtues of her mother; positive, passionate, perplexing, capable, curious, charming: dangerous.

  “We can afford to lose a few. None of them will talk, they value their families far too much. Those that rise to the top will take part in our own superb plot and we need to make sure things go with a bang. Remember, remember as the British say…”

  Stefanescu was about to add his own tactical thinking when he realised that once more his older sibling had re-gained the upper hand. A blank phone display indicated that he was no longer on the line, back with his left hand on the stem of a cut-crystal glass containing Hennessy cognac and his right firmly on the ludicrously attractive rear of a good-looking girl. It was how he liked to end every call.

  He vigorously slapped her and downed the warm liquid before inverting the glass and watching the last few droplets cling to the side before landing on her skin and trickling across the back of her taut and tanned legs.

  “Remind me girl, where are you from?”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  The phone rang in Daniel’s car. He looked at Cade and mouthed ‘Frank’.

  “Yes boss. How’s it going?”

  “Enough of the small talk, John. Where are you?”

  He thought about altering the truth to suit the situation but recalled the much-loved, much-used police phrase: ‘never bullshit a bullshitter.’

  “Heading south Frank.”

  “Would you like to narrow that down a little gentleman? Are we talking south London, southern England, Monte Carlo or the bloody pole with the same name?”

  “The second one. We’ve got some A1 source intel that suggests our targets, including Hewett are heading for the Kent coast.”

  “Hewett?”

  “Yes. Frank, it’s a long story. More than a hunch. He’s involved and I suspect he’s already up to his nuts. We’ve all been blinded by his natural charisma. I’m prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt – perhaps that the group have something over him but my gut says otherwise.”

  “Hewett?” he asked again, still in disbelief. “John if this is even partly true the fall-out will be monstrous. You realise this don’t you? It could end you too. I need more than just a copper’s gut bloody feeling.”

  “And your point, sir?”

  “Do I really need to outline this in words of one syllable JD?” He paused, less for effect than to provide some thinking space. “OK, what is your plan?”

  “I want to bloody locate them. Actually, I want to find Hewett and ring his bloody neck.”

  “I assume Jack is with you? Leave it to the locals John, they’re more than capable. We can put a call into the Frontier Ops team at the tunnel and also alert Dover Harbour Board Police. The only other option is one of the other ferry ports. My bet is Dover. It’s where I would head. More traffic. Not that that’s where you are probably heading right now?”

  He found himself being drawn into the situation and smiled. He’d been there once. Still missed the thrill of the chase.

  He continued. “Not that you are continuing at warp factor five down the M2 as we speak, eh?”

  “Not at the moment, sir, no.”

  “I’ve got a call coming in from the boss JD. I suspect he is going to re-affirm a little chat we had yesterday. He wants your team off this wild goose chase and onto some operation called Blunt – knife crime. The current sexy thing in the Met, apparently. Like I say, if it were my operation I would be leaving it to the locals. More than capable and all that. But unless I give you the direct order to extract yourselves from this pile of bovine excrement, just steel yourself to reply that we’ve not had this chat – seriously John, if the deputy commissioner finds out he’ll have my nuts on a cracker and knowing his little ways it will be smothered with bloody Marmite.”

  “Thank you, sir. We appreciate this. At risk of being boring…”

  “You’ve got twenty-four hours. Not a minute more. Stay safe and do not submit any claims for lunch in France. Clear?”

  “Waterford sir.”

  “It’s Waterman.”

  “I meant the crystal…”

  “I know.”

  Hewett’s Audi maintained a steady seventy as it crossed into Kent and headed towards the Medway Bridge. His raw instinct told him to drive to the nearest police station and hand himself in – or better still hand them over and escape with his integrity intact.

  However, it was his reputation he valued more than anything else and they held the ace cards resolutely to their chests; his financial transactions, imagery of the meetings, phone conversations. It was all so well done.

  The latter were damning, but the video imagery was career ending – they were a beautiful, young and at times athletic couple. It was just fun at first, but then it became addictive. No names, no promises. He was trapped, and they had cornered him perfectly. It wasn’t as if he had enough to worry about with his debt programme and constant fear of a public, painful and very familial shaming regime. He found himself dropping into a widening sinkhole with no idea when the ground would next meet him.

  “Left at this exit. To Chatham. We meet with a friend. Change the car and then to Folkestone. Give me your phone.”

  “Why? I thought we trusted each other Stefan?”

  “You do. But I don’t.” He lowered the tinted glass and nonchalantly tossed the phone over the bridge. They had travelled at least two hundred metres before it slipped below the surface of the river and lodged into its muddy base.

  “Well that’s just bloody marvellous. If I get the chance I’m going to do the same to you. I had everything on that damned thing.” He sensed he was getting angrier by the second but judged his audience, a sociopath, a psychopath and an unknown quantity. Hardly a favourable hand.

  Stefanescu shrugged his shoulders and grinned.

  “All things of your past Johnnie. Chapters that are now gone, shredded like your debts. Cheer up, soon you will have new friends, new numbers. Maybe even new debts. Right here, then left at the roundabout.”

  Hewett smiled internally. “You are not that smart you piece of…worthless human waste.” He mentally stroked the second phone in his jacket pocket.

  Fifteen minutes later, through medium density traffic they arrived at a neutrally grey industrial estate and were ushered into a stereotypical, shuttered unit whose only identifying feature was the number fourteen.

  The shutter dropped behind them. Hewett switched the Audi off and stepped out of the car. The immediate stench of lacquer provided all he needed to know that this was a body shop, and he soon imagined his beloved car would be wheeled into the booth and reborn.

  To enforce this a male in his twenties began to unscrew the number plates and toss them into a bin, already full of similar identifiers.

  “When do I get the car back?”

  “You don’t. And anyway, where you are going you need left-hand drive. We will buy you a new one. Perhaps a real car, like an AMG Mercedes. Yes? You like this, I can tell. Anyway, I need fresh clothes and a strong cologne.” He playfully slapped Hewett on the cheek before walking away to answer his phone.

  Hewett breathed in, deliberately slow, coating his lungs with acetone. He was in so deep now he could taste the polluted water on the back of his throat. He looked around but everywhere there were dark eyes looking back, questioning why the boss had this pale-faced and English man with him.

  Hewett’s attention was suddenly diverted to the adjoining unit. He could see clearly through a door and watched Gheorghiu helping another male remove a large tarpaulin from a vehicle. It was white, with red and blue details, appeared to be newly painted and bore insignia along the panelled-sides and on the driver’s door.

  Hewett looked closer. He
could see the multi-coloured sweeping coachwork on the Renault Traffic van but was unable to ascertain its exact identity or purpose. He was joined by Stefanescu.

  “I see you are intrigued Johnnie. Please, take a look. After all, you are one of us now. Go on, sit in the front passenger seat. Go!”

  Hewett did as instructed. As he walked towards the van, he saw the familiar logo on the bonnet. Police Nationale. He felt a tap on the shoulder; it was Constantin.

  “Get undressed. Put this on.” His English was considerably better than Hewett’s Romanian.

  Hewett looked around for somewhere to dress.

  “Oh dear. Are we shy?” Stefanescu asked the former stellar member of the British government elite.

  “You will need these too.”

  Hewett looked at his own image on an ID card. His name was Charles Durand, and he was now, at least according to the card, a Brigadier-chef in the Police Aux Frontières, the team formed to patrol and control French borders around the world.

  “I have done my homework Mr Hewett. I know you speak fluent French, and besides, you look more like an officer than Constantin. Get used to your new name and role. We will pass into France as soon as possible, whether we do so without causing alarm is entirely down to you. And please, do remember, I also understand the language enough to know if you are still one of us.”

  Resigned to the fact Hewett pulled on the dark blue boiler suit, adjusted the fit with a belt and clipped the ID into place on the left breast pocket. He discreetly palmed the secreted phone into the left trouser pocket.

  “Tres bon monsieur Hewett. Vous avez l’air d’un officier!”

  He caused his small team to laugh, many of whom also had a fundamental grasp of the language.

  “Hurry up everyone. We need to be ready. The other teams join us tonight. We head for France at two in the morning then our new lives can begin. I do not know about you but I have plans for the weekend!”

  There was no celebration, just a repeated nodding of heads around the twin commercial units as people resumed their tasks. Hewett stepped in front of Stefanescu and gripped him by the arm.